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At war with the machine, the Great Strike of 1917 .

On Wednesday 2nd August, RN’s Late Night Live presents a public forum at Carriageworks in Sydney to mark the centenary of the Great Strike of 1917 during WW 1, from 4.30pm (5.00pm start).

On the panel with Phillip Adams will be the secretary of the ACTU Sally McManus, labour historian Professor Lucy Taksa of Macquarie University, NSW Labour politician John Graham MLC, and economist Jim Stanford from the Centre for the future of work at the Australia institute.

The Great Strike of 1917 wasn’t about pay but the impact of technology and new forms of work organisation - it was labelled by the labour movement at the time as the ‘1917 strike against Robotism’. The language of 1917 and the 1920s is surprisingly familiar to our contemporary discussion of digital disruption and the threat of robots taking over.

On August 2nd, 1917, thousands of workers from the Randwick Workshops and Eveleigh Carriage Shops walked out in protest at the introduction of a new way of work called the ‘card system’ and industrial action continued until October 1917.